Housing Situation/Needs Assessment in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-HABITAT) commissioned Fafo AIS to head a team of three consultants to write two reports: (i) a housing situation/needs assessment report and (ii) a report discussing the possibilities for establishing a human settlements fund for the Palestinian people.

Study fieldwork was carried out in two periods between 14 October and 20 November 2002. Information was gathered mainly through meetings and interviews with several ministries of the Palestinian Authority, various public and private agencies, Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs, and international agencies such as UNRWA, UNDP, UNSCO, and the World Bank. In addition, review of written material was carried out. Publications from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics were of particular importance for the housing assessment.

While in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), the team relied heavily on local support from the Fafo offices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which secured maximum access to information under difficult circumstances. Fafo staff in the OPT also conducted own field interviews and collected information between and after the field visits of the consultants.

The Assessment report analyses the current housing situation in detail, including dwelling types and house ownership status, dwelling size and density, housing infrastructure and sanitation, house building practices and costs. It identifies housing shortage due to inadequacies and overcrowding, and concludes that there is a need for 130,000 new residential dwellings in the OPT. The negative effect of the current, volatile conflict, including Israel's closure policies, on people' income and the housing situation is described. Furthermore, the report finds that commercial bank loans are inaccessible to a large proportion of the population due to land titling problems and lack of collaterals, legal impediments, risk adverse banks, and low income-levels. Finally, the assessment report takes a look at key players in the housing sector, identifies the lack of a coherent human settlements policy in the OPT, and hints at how an international agent as the UN-HABITAT can support this sector in the near future.

Project period: October 2002 - January 2003.

Results

Åge A. Tiltnes and Elias Magembe: Housing Situation and Housing Needs Assessment in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Anne Ruden: Proposed Human Settlements Fund for the Palestinian People

Researchers

Åge A. Tiltnes, Fafo

Elias Magembe, Housing expert, Tanzania/USA

Anne Ruden, Director, The Norwegian State Housing Bank